Public servant denied access to 'spy' evidence

A senior public servant accused of inappropriate contact with South Korean spies has lost his bid to see the evidence used to revoke his high-level security clearance.

Yeon Kim had been a senior trade specialist with the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES).

He had held the security clearance since 2001, but in September 2011 it was revoked by ASIO.

Dr Kim is fighting the decision in the Federal Court.

As part of the challenge, he had asked the court to set aside two certificates issued by the federal attorney-general to prevent him seeing evidence put to the original Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) hearing.

But Justice Lindsay Foster has ruled it is now too late to challenge the certificates and Dr Kim should have made his application at the time of the AAT hearing.

"His failure to do so led to the inevitable consequence that the hearing before the AAT was conducted... upon the basis that the certificates had to be respected," Justice Foster said.

"In my judgment it is now too late for the applicant to attack the certificates.

"He cannot stand by and watch while the certificates are deployed against him and then subsequently seek to challenge them when it becomes apparent that they were a significant contributor to the applicant's loss in the AAT.

"To allow him to do so would be to undermine the integrity of the AAT's procedures and the statutory provisions which underpin those procedures."